Hands on (and sometimes off) in object investigation session

As the It’s Not What You Think: Communicating Medical Materialities workshop in March, we experimented with different formats – from quick-fire intro presentations to break the interdisciplinary ice, to a hands-on object investigation session. In the object session (video here), participants were sorted into four groups, and entered an empty exhibition room to find one table per group, covered with acid-free tissue on which perched groups of objects selected from Museion’s collections. The four groups had been curated under the themes ‘metal’, ‘chemical’, ‘bodily’, and ‘seeing/touching’, purposefully generic monikers intended to leave the investigations as open as possible. Participants were led through two activities, aiming to make their encounters with objects slower, and a little stranger. Lucy Lyons asked people to wield pencils and their senses, and David Pantalony invited the groups to consider possible material, form, function, and origin. David and Lucy have written some reflections below. We were delighted (and relieved) that everyone joined in – we were asking people to spend valuable time doing something experimental, not obviously instrumental, and perhaps a little embarrassing. David and Lucy’s conviction was essential to allowing participants to clear the hurdle of self-consciousness, and respond to the potency of the objects on their paper islands. I also think that the room &#...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Tags: aesthetics artefacts conferences haptics human remains INWYT medical scientific instruments senses Source Type: blogs